https://www.tinymixtapes.com/news/rip-a ... dumitrescu
Ana-Maria Avram died earlier this week. Just a few hours before stumbling upon the news, I was listening to Orbit of Eternal Grace and simply wondering where would have the musicians in Bucharest have been without her and Iancu Dumitrescu.
This brings me back memories from the George Enescu festival a couple of years ago, my only Enescu so far. It was great getting to see live the two of them and to rub shoulders with the players in the Hyperion ensemble. Sure, I knew pretty much what to expect, but it took me to hear their music in the context of the festival to understand what sets them apart from most of our academics.
The night before the concert, some of the people in Hyperion gathered in front of Anthony Frost English Bookshop (which, sadly, also closed down in the meantime) and performed some wildly creative improvisations. I thought it's such a great thing that international players of such caliber could be brought together here by Avram and Dumitrescu.
They put a lot of effort in the people who play their compositions and it always seemed to me that they are great at working with them and being open to their approaches and different backgrounds, that musicians learned a lot from them. And now I also realize that, without their efforts, there would be even less exposure to contemporary composers - which is the least concern of festival organizers in Romania...
(That they have exposure and reputation abroad is a good thing. It will be great if the younger people who learned so much from them will carry the torch...)